Typo in title (also present on YouTube). Their name is fail0verflow.
ironically
coincidentally
For irony they would need to be named something like FailDeficiency.
Fai0verflow: Linux on the PS4 [video]
51–60 of 90 posts
Re: Fai0verflow: Linux on the PS4 [video]
#52Hackers gonna hack. Every generation of these consoles is a new challenge to all the hackers out there. You've got to think that the engineers who designed these systems eventually get "engineering syndrome" from staring at these systems for years and eventually start to be blind about tiny problems. Corporations put millions and millions of dollars behind the design of these systems and a ragtag group of folks comes…
> What's there to protect that they work so hard to guard it?
A talking point is that closed systems make piracy harder which makes for a more captive group of buyers. Again, just a talking point, we don't have enough comparable data to study.
Re: Fai0verflow: Linux on the PS4 [video]
#53Wait wait wait, HDD support through USB? Are you serious? Any hardware manufacturers care to explain why this might be the case?
The HDD is the only user-serviceable part in the PS4, perhaps USB was chosen over PCIe SATA to make theoretical DMA attacks on the system more difficult?
Re: Fai0verflow: Linux on the PS4 [video]
#54Hackers gonna hack. Every generation of these consoles is a new challenge to all the hackers out there. You've got to think that the engineers who designed these systems eventually get "engineering syndrome" from staring at these systems for years and eventually start to be blind about tiny problems. Corporations put millions and millions of dollars behind the design of these systems and a ragtag group of folks comes…
Something to keep in mind is that it's becoming a trend that companies sell the systems at a loss (Notably, I think the only company that doesn't is Nintendo). Especially for the beginning of it's life, this is only practical if it's a closed system - Because if it wasn't, then they're essentially just offering the hardware at a huge discount to people who have no intention of buying any games, and the games is where they're going to make their revenue.
I don't know if Sony every actually said anything official, but I remember that being part of the reason why the 'Other OS' feature was removed from the PS3 - Places/People were buying them up and running Linux on them because they were such a good deal for the hardware.
I wouldn't want to bet money on my predictions, but I would say that if someone does build a platform like the PS4 that's open and can run Steam, it would cost a lot more for the consumer then the PS4 since it would probably be priced closer to the actual value of the hardware - And that would put off a lot of potential customers.
That said, there's an obvious chicken-and-egg problem in getting people to buy the system, and getting developers to develop for it, but having a cheaper system is definitely an advantage (Obviously, already being well-known to both developers and consumers is probably even more important). Regardless, if they had set the price of the PS4 at $1,000, it probably wouldn't be doing so hot right now.
Re: Fai0verflow: Linux on the PS4 [video]
#55Hackers gonna hack. Every generation of these consoles is a new challenge to all the hackers out there. You've got to think that the engineers who designed these systems eventually get "engineering syndrome" from staring at these systems for years and eventually start to be blind about tiny problems. Corporations put millions and millions of dollars behind the design of these systems and a ragtag group of folks comes…
> Why do developers choose a closed platform like PS4 vs the Steam Machine?
Several reasons, in order of significance:
* Console manufacturers will often subsidize your development for platform exclusivity, in order to attract users. * Large userbase. * Single hardware target. While consoles (intentionally) have no software portability, you are also targeting a single set of hardware so the QA is easier and the dev process requires less testing.
So basically, in reverse order, if you want Steam Machines to win:
* You need APIs that are perfectly portable, so your SDL + Vulkan game can run everywhere without having to manually fix everything. * You need users buying your platform. * You need current manufacturers to lose their profit margins enough to stop buying off exclusivity deals.
Note that with consoles, exclusives attract users which attract exclusives. Its a positive feedback loop that, at least in this console generation when you can build a PC of comparable power to a PS4 / Xbone for the same price, there is no barrier to entry cost on the user besides the preassembly costs, and the fact Steam Machine vendors are selling at profit where Sony / MS care less about margins because they make per-sale revenue in the same way Steam does. But Valve isn't making the consoles, so Alienware needs to keep the lights on exclusively through sales.
That means there is both, A. no incentive for platform exclusivity on Steam Machines, because you aren't getting lockin to your Steam Machine, you would buy exclusivity to the ecosystem and B. no Steam Machine competitive with PS4 / Xbone in price / performance unless you are buying a lot of games to make up the gap between console used prices vs Steam sales.
> Is there a future with an open gaming platform like the Steam Machine?
Yes, but not without Valve biting the bullet to force enough user adoption to get the feedback loop going. They launched it last month without any compelling reason to buy one, and thus sales were underwhelming. And the only way to make them a compelling buy requires Valve to spend money on it - either through subsidizing sales with huge amounts of free games, or directly by making Steam Machines more cost effective up front than current consoles. And then on top of that, you need a critical mass of users to get developers releasing all cross platform releases for it, while also having the games to attract users. Usually, you get that through exclusives, but as I said, nobody has a motivation to release exclusives on SteamOS except Valve, and that would only be if they value adoption of their platform over raw sales figures, and I bet they don't.
Re: Fai0verflow: Linux on the PS4 [video]
#56Hackers gonna hack. Every generation of these consoles is a new challenge to all the hackers out there. You've got to think that the engineers who designed these systems eventually get "engineering syndrome" from staring at these systems for years and eventually start to be blind about tiny problems. Corporations put millions and millions of dollars behind the design of these systems and a ragtag group of folks comes…
Something to keep in mind is that it's becoming a trend that companies sell the systems at a loss (Notably, I think the only company that doesn't is Nintendo). Especially for the beginning of it's life, this is only practical if it's a closed system - Because if it wasn't, then they're essentially just offering the hardware at a huge discount to people who have no intention of buying any games, and the games is where…
but I remember that being part of the reason why the
'Other OS' feature was removed from the PS3 -
Places/People were buying them up and running Linux on
them because they were such a good deal for the hardware.
The real danger (for Sony) in opening up their consoles is the risk of piracy. That's a huge attack vector for hackers looking to defeat a console's copy protection scheme(s).
Sony's biggest nightmare is a world where teenagers can easily copy games because, as you say, that's where the real money is.
Re: Fai0verflow: Linux on the PS4 [video]
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wine runs the binaries. It's much, much faster than Emscripten.
Wine is faster than Emscripten because asm.js is a slow target, not because HLE produces fundamentally better results than transpilation. Wine has a variant, libwine, that can linked into a Windows binary at compile-time, replacing that Windows binary's linkages to Windows libraries with linkages to Wine. If you have the opportunity, this is always the more processor-efficient way to go (and I'm surprised so many com…
I know about libwine but the main reason is... is not as complete as the full Win32 API :)
Re: Fai0verflow: Linux on the PS4 [video]
#58Wait wait wait, HDD support through USB? Are you serious? Any hardware manufacturers care to explain why this might be the case?
Maybe because they support attached storage through USB and could reduce complexity by only sourcing, manufactoring, supporting and making solid one bus/controller? What would they possibly gain by supporting ATA devices?
Re: Fai0verflow: Linux on the PS4 [video]
#59Wait wait wait, HDD support through USB? Are you serious? Any hardware manufacturers care to explain why this might be the case?
Maybe because they support attached storage through USB and could reduce complexity by only sourcing, manufactoring, supporting and making solid one bus/controller? What would they possibly gain by supporting ATA devices?
The video suggests the Blu-Ray drive is attached to an AHCI SATA controller. So maybe there was some other legal or technical reason they needed to isolate it from the internal storage.
Re: Fai0verflow: Linux on the PS4 [video]
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something to keep in mind is that it's becoming a trend that companies sell the systems at a loss (Notably, I think the only company that doesn't is Nintendo). Especially for the beginning of it's life, this is only practical if it's a closed system - Because if it wasn't, then they're essentially just offering the hardware at a huge discount to people who have no intention of buying any games, and the games is where…
but I remember that being part of the reason why the 'Other OS' feature was removed from the PS3 - Places/People were buying them up and running Linux on them because they were such a good deal for the hardware. Wait, really? The PS3 was outclassed by generic PC hardware pretty quickly, and wasn't much faster than a netbook unless you were writing some seriously multithreaded or PS3 GPU-specific code. I never heard o…
At least somebody thought it was a good idea: http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2009/12/09/military-purchases-2...